ADoseOfMee’s 1 Year Blogging Anniversary Contest is now closed. Thank you to all who participated. I will announce the winner shortly.

Update: Monday, December 20, 2010: Congrats to EmmerTT for winning the grand prize. I told Chong that if I had less than 5 comments (Hello Lurkers!), I’d send out cookies to everyone! I’m still baking cookies and hope to be done by tonight or tomorrow so please email me your addresses, everyone, and I will send out your packages by Wednesday afternoon. Thanks for participating!

Update: Thursday, December 23, 2010: Congrats to Robin for winning the grand prize. I will ship out your package tomorrow.

Wow…I can’t believe it’s been one year since I started blogging. It feels like I just started blogging a few months ago. It’s been a lot of fun making, baking, eating, drooling, and sharing with everyone. To celebrate, I’m going to give a lucky reader a 1 year anniversary present.

-And a few more surprises that even I don’t know about….yet! (This will probably include more cookies and/or goodies to munch on).

**I will take a picture of the final package on Sunday, December 19 so you’ll know what you’ll be receiving. Who doesn’t love free groceries and goodies?**

How to enter (Be sure to leave a VALID email address or I won’t be able to contact you if you win):

Leave a comment stating what you like about my blog, whether it be the food, videos, pictures, ramblings, etc.

OR

Leave a comment about what you would like to see on my blog in the future.

I reserve the right to change any information as needed.

One entry per person only, please. This will close on Sunday, December 19, at 11:59 PM CST. Again, be sure you leave a valid email address so I can contact you if you win, or else no valid email address = no winner. If the winner does not contact me within 48 hours, a new winner will be chosen.

I’m still alive–I’ve just been so busy this week baking for the in-laws, my cookie swap partner, and just because that I barely had time for anything else–much less, sleep! I doubt my in-laws read my blog so I think it’s safe to post up pictures of what I’ve been baking…and if for some reason they do read my blog, oh well, I guess it won’t be a surprise anymore.

The gum drop tree was for a few of my co-workers (I made 3), the Raspberry Almond Thumbprints and package was for my cookie swap partner, the cinnamon applesauce Christmas ornaments are for me, the box of cookies was a treat I brought in to work, the bag and mint chocolate chip cookies was my treat from my cookie swap partner and most everything else is for the in-laws. Some stuff not pictured are: carrot cake, zucchini bread, Too Much Chocolate cake, and a Christmas ornament package. I just mailed it today so now I can get some rest.

I have some exciting news that I’ll have to share later so stay tuned!

Happy early Thanksgiving, everyone! I’m doing my Thanksgiving dinner today because my mom (and aunts) will be going to Laos on Tuesday so they’ll miss Thanksgiving so I decided to do it before my mom left. It’s going to be a delicious dinner! My rosemary garlic turkey is roasting away in the rotisserie, the dinner rolls are rising, the baked ravioli is waiting to be baked, and so the the stuffing. The only cooking I have to do left is the roasted rosemary potatoes, mashed potatoes, and bake everything in a timely manner. The turkey always smells and looks amazing. I will update later, when everything is done cooking.

I’m quite proud of myself and Chong. We managed to prep a lot last night, which made cooking today so much easier. The turkey was a lot better than last year–a rotisserie turkey never fails–and the gravy turned out good. The best part was the dinner rolls. I can’t stop raving about them. I bought frozen bread dough, let 3 loaves defrost, then shaped them into 8 dinner rolls, let them rise for a few hours, brushed with milk and sprinkled with sesame seeds and baked to a golden deliciousness. They were really soft and OH SO GOOD! I’m definitely making these a Thanksgiving–and any other day–tradition. For dessert, we had pumpkin pie, Dutch apple pie, and homemade rice krispies, which are not pictured.

So now that Thanksgiving is over, it’s time to think about Christmas. Actually, I’ve already planned out what I’m doing for Christmas. I’m doing a breakfast buffet (menu not finalized yet) and HOT POT for lunch! Yah! I’ll finally get my hot pot. So exicted! Well, I’m off to spend some well deserved quality rest time with Chong. Good night!

Hello! It’s been a while since I’ve last blogged. Life has surely been busy. Anyhow, I’m just sharing some random food pictures I made this past month. First up is a wonton noodle bokchoy soup. This is actually the second time I’ve made this soup–the first time didn’t turn out as yummy. It’s really easy to make. I will definitely do a video or pictorial on this so stay tuned!

Plain wonton noodle bokchoy soup

With all the trimmings–soy sauce, garlic chili sauce, cilantro, and green onions

For the wontons, I used ground pork, corn starch, salt, black pepper and shaoxing wine because I wanted it plain. I used dried Kung Fu noodles and cooked it in water for 3 minutes. I blanched the bokchoy and gave it an ice water bath after it was cooked. I forgot what I used for the broth–it was either a pork or chicken broth. Added the condiments and it was delicious.

I made a fresh batch for breakfast the next day and took it to work in my Tiger thermos bottle. After 2 hours of sitting in the thermos, the noodles had become soft and silky and even more delicious. This is a great dinner/breakfast option to make for those cold winter days that are coming soon.

My brother, Wit, loves anything Oreo and cheesecake. He wanted to buy an Oreo cheesecake but I told him I’d make him one. So I kept my promise and baked him one. Boy, baking that cheesecake sure was time consuming but it was well worth it.

Took me 15 minutes to whip everything together

Pre-baked

Baked, with a sour cream topping

Oreo crust and another layer of crushed Oreos in the middle

Care for a slice?

Mmmmm….mmm! This was good but Chong and I couldn’tdidn’t want to finish our half so I brought 1/4 of it to work. Next time, if I ever decide to bake another Oreo cheesecake again, I’ll mix the Oreo with the cheesecake and see how that turns out. I love cheesecakes but it’s too fattening so I’ll only bake it once in a blue, blue, blue moon.

This is The Best Homemade Roasted Chicken I’ve Ever Eaten. It’s extremely juicy, moist, falls off the bone, and the skin remained crispy–which is the best part. I’ve been meaning to make it since I stumbled upon the recipe but the procrastinator/perfectionist in me stopped myself because I didn’t have the ingredients I wanted. Regardless, I decided to go ahead with what I had on hand and it didn’t disappoint.

I rubbed the chicken with salt, black pepper, garlic powder, seasoning salt, Italian seasoning, thyme and rosemary and stuffed it with half a red onion and more rosemary and thyme and roasted it for 5.5 hours @ 250 degrees. I added some seasoned potatoes, purple potatoes, carrots and onions at the halfway point and made some gravy out of the pan drippings. The only change I would make next time is to marinate the chicken overnight.

Roasted Chicken Pictorial

Seasoned chicken waiting to be roasted

Sideview

2 hours later–notice the pan drippings

Seasoned vegetables–I love the purple potatoes

Laying on a bed of vegetables

Roasted chicken, cut up

Roasted vegetables

Gravy made from pan drippings

My dinner

Does anyone else crave turkey with all the trimmings when it’s nowhere near Thanksgivings? I know I do! This dinner is the closest I’ll get to a Thanksgiving dinner in August. The next time I make roasted chicken, I’ll do a garlic mashed potatoes and stuffing. Chong gives it 2 thumbs up and raves about how good it is. It’s definitely going to show up on our dinner menu on a monthly basis now.

If you can’t tell that it’s summer by the hot weather we’ve having then you can surely tell by what vegetables are in season. I got some zucchinis from the Farmer’s Market just to make zucchini bread. Enjoy! Here’s the Zucchini Bread pictorial.

Last summer, I made my first yeast bread using the rosemary from my garden. I was a bit hesitant to try making bread from scratch but fortunately, the bread turned out to be delicious. I can’t wait until my baby rosemary plant grows big enough to start using it. I also made steak saltimbocca and that turned out pretty tasty, too. Served with a side of tomato and green beans. Yum yum.

The rosemary bread tasted so good warm out of the oven and spread with a little butter. I’m not growing sage this year so unless I’m really craving steak saltimbocca, I probably won’t be making this dish this year. Chong says he’ll eat it again if I make it but I’m sure he’d prefer pasta or regular steak.

***I’m so slow sometimes. I couldn’t figure out how to link websites until now. So from now on, blogging and linking websites will be so much easier!***

Yah! I found my inspiration to cook and bake again! I was browsing through some food blogs and came upon this wonderful food site, TasteSpotting , and OMG, I’m in food heaven. Browsed the site for a day and found some great food ideas. This is the first recipe I’ve tried and it turned out pretty good. Will make little changes next time I make them, which will probably be soon. Thanks to Chef Cathy at ShowFood Chef for the recipe.

After all the time spent rolling, cutting, transferring and baking, this is all the stars I got from my first batch! My right hand was cramping from making all those star and flower cut outs but it was worth it. For the third batch, I just rolled it out and made square crackers. Chong prefers the 3rd batch to the first two but they’re all equally good.

My 5 year old niece was over a few weeks ago and she wanted to bake cupcakes so we made black-bottom cupcakes (since she loves chocolate). I think she somewhat associates me with cupcakes because we’ve baked some a few times before. Her favorite thing to do is decorating them with sprinkles.

Black Bottom Cupcakes

These are REALLY good cold!

I also made some somewhat pitiful looking pretzel because I was craving some. I made a huge mistake and left the damp pretzels to dry off on top of a towel instead of just laying them for 5 seconds and then placing them on my baking sheet. After the bottom had dried off, the pretzels stuck to the towel, making them hard to get off. Now I have a baked dough towel. : ( I didn’t know how they would turn out but they ended up baking up nicely. I forgot how to shape the pretzels so mines look huge. But they were good and satisfying and that’s all that matters.

Pretzel

I got some rhubarb from my aunt yesterday and since I’ve been wanting to make Strawberry Rhubarb Pie, I decided to make it from scratch, including the dough. The dough was pretty easy, I don’t understand why I was so hesitant and scared to try it in the first place. The pie turned out beautiful but it’s really SOUR! DH doesn’t even like to eat sour fruits so I know he won’t be eating this. He prefers chocolate covered strawberries to the real thing, unless it’s sweet.